Help Me Help You

March 29, 2010

I let the cat out of the bag in a post last week about my natural tendency to pay attention to signs. Recently I participated in a board meeting which required travel. On my way to the meeting, I spotted the following sign on the side of the road.

It was hard to miss. The bright yellow canvas, the size of the letters and numbers, the exclamation mark, and the proximity to the road (it even had a slight lean towards the road) all seemed to animate the sign. It was as if the sign was anxiously and passionately begging to be…well…put to work. I’m not quite sure how or why my mind works this way sometimes, but I immediately began seeing an analogy with my library. (Yes, I know.)

Are there underutilized things in the library that could be better employed to advance the cause of our mission? Things that, in some cases, may be practically begging to be put into service?

[SIDEBAR: Granted, the ultimate purpose of this sign is for someone to make money–certainly the person on the other end of that phone number and quite often whoever decides to lease the sign. Libraries are not in the money-making business, but the methods being used with that roadside billboard do translate to the library: advertising and resource deployment. In order for the resources and services provided by our libraries to be used, people need to know that they exist. In order for people to know that the resources and services exist, we need to tell them. We need to advertise. And how do we advertise? By identifying and using the tools we have at hand which best get the word out. What do we advertise? Resources and services that have been carefully selected and made available.]

For most of the remaining 60 miles to the board meeting, I held another, hastily-called brainstorming meeting in my head. (No pun intended.) I suppose what follows counts as the minutes of that meeting. I asked myself: What things are already in our library–perhaps right under our noses–that are potential candidates for better utilization? Here are some initial possibilities that I came up with:

Spaces. Are there any physical spaces that could be reworked or reorganized to house and enable better usage of our resources and services? What about that unorganized room in a fairly high-traffic area that has become a catch-all storage room over time? Could it be cleared out and repurposed as a study space, etc.? Or what about the entrance area? Could this foyer space be more inviting to those entering and better made to encourage return visits? Could it be used for promotional purposes? What about digital spaces? Are we making the most of our online presence (library website, social networking profiles, library content embedded in other online spaces across the campus and beyond)? How about the monitor screens on computer workstations? That’s prime real estate for advertising and promotion in the library.

Resources. We all have invested a lot of time, energy, and money into acquiring resources for our library users. Are we using them to their fullest potential? I have to ask myself that very question. What about the reference collection? Ours is sizeable, but used less and less each year it seems. Are there ways that we can alter the makeup or presentation of this collection to let it work to draw users? [David Lee King shared a post on customer service last week (excellent post, by the way). There he challenges libraries to consider processes that hinder a self-paced, self-serve library experience. He mentions “the reference section that can’t be checked out (even though those books aren’t used much)”. Food for thought.] Or what about our greatest resource of all–the library staff? Are there certain skill sets that we are not fully allowing to shine?

What about you? Take a look around. Are there things already at hand where you are that with a little creativity, encouragement, and elbow grease you could better employ to advance your mission?

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In last Friday’s post we had some fun with a billboard sign about illiteracy. As promised, here–upside down–are the “answers” to the top 3 things that came to my mind as lessons to be learned from the sign. If you don’t want to take on the challenge of reading upside down, just click the image for properly-oriented viewing.